Project details

Total cost:

EU contribution:

Coordinated in:

Topic(s):

Funding scheme:

CSC - Cost-sharing contracts

Objective

The particular objectives of this project were to preserve, characterise and distribute thousands of different mutant stocks of Drosophila melanogaster. This infrastructure concentration included the development of the already existing Drosophila Stock Centre resource in Umeå, Sweden, the development of a new more specialised resource in Szeged, Hungary, and making these resources widely available to researchers in European Member States. All the genetic information of mutant strains maintained in these Stock Centres was going to be made available electronically to the European research community via the database "FlyBase".

Expected deliverables:

The deliverables obtained in this project can be measured by:- the number of stocks maintained in the two Centres;- the number of new P-element insertion lines characterized;- the number of stocks distributed to the research community;- the number of scientific reports published, with results obtained using these strains.There were more than 10,000 different mutant Drosophila lines maintained at the two Stocks centres by the end of this project. This is in accordance with the stipulated increase in the project contract. The P-element insertion lines have been continuously characterized and all the data from deletion mapping, allelic testing, in situ hybridisation mapping and lethal phase of homozygotes, have been included in the FlyBase database. Over the complete project period over 45,000 mutant stocks have been shipped to research groups all over the world. Of these 62% were delivered within Europe.Complete lists of stocks cured and delivered upon request by the Stock Centres, are displayed on the Internet at the database FlyBase, which has in part been funded by the European Commission. This database is widely used by the research community, as can be interpreted from the list of active European Drosophila researchers included in the database address book (6,100 entries). Over 95% of the stock requests are also submitted to the Stock Centres by using the order form displayed in connection to the "Stock" part of the database. When searching for a specific gene, either by function, map site or sequence similarity, the alleles available in stocks are displayed and can be easily ordered by filling in this simple form.The research community has used these mutant strains in their research, either for cloning of new genes or for identification of functions of the gene products, within areas such as: cell division, development of the brain and nervous system, cell signalling, tumour suppressors and chromatin structure.The research groups directly involved in the management of this project has during the four-year period published over 75 publications. Since these groups constitute only a minor part of the entire European Drosophila research community, the total amount of new knowledge accumulated over the period is substantial.